How strong of a Taiwanese accent do most people have in Taipei?
I want to learn more about the Taiwanese accent. It's really hard to find Taiwanese learning supplies, so it's really hard not to talk like a mainlander. My ex was from Taipei, but when I asked him about it, he didn't give me a clear answer, and after that we lost contact.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwanese_Mandarin)
Before, I saw on Wikipedia that there are people in Taiwan that change "f" to "hu," "qi" to "ki," "zhi" to "zi," "chi" to "ci," "shi" to "si," and so on.
But when I asked him, "Omg, is this all true?!" he just said, "I think the Taipei accent is similar to standard mainland Mandarin. Everyone who uses all of those pronunciations are like hillbillies. They sound kind of funny."
But I know he has at least a bit of an accent because once, when he told me how to pronounce 手, he said it like "sou." I remember it well because I thought it sounded a lot like the Japanese そう.
I listened to the few episodes of Chinesepod.com featuring Taiwan, and they didn't go into much depth with this, but from the ones I listened to, they highlighted "sh" becomes "s," "ch" becomes "c," and "eng" becomes "en." (Although I never heard of "eng" to "en" before...) Is just this good enough to sound good in Taipei?